The Last Summer
by mccabbages
Summary: Hermione Granger feels the stress of being Muggle-born in a world that hates Muggles and of being prepared to hunt Horcruxes and kill Voldemort. Previously a one shot from 2011. Warning (AKA T): Self Harm (Disclaimer: Harry Potter belongs to JK Rowling. Not me. Unfortunately.)
1. Chapter 1

The smile somehow etched on her face is so obviously faked its scary. The laughter echoing all over is so obviously forced it's a scream. The song tumbling from her tongue is so obviously pained it hurts us all. The nighttime tears that dry her out are so obviously wasted we all cry along. The gashes she thinks she hides well with a sleeve are so obviously watching us we can't help but stare. The hands we discreetly offer to her daily are so painfully ignored we wait, we wait, we wait.

Hermione.

All legs, curves, smiles, hair, and eyes, every boy follows her, including me. I, however, follow her in secret, watching along with everyone else, following, waiting for disaster to arrive. We only follow because we all have some fantasy that we will be the one to save her. But we all feel that this summer will be the last summer for everybody.

I hop on my bike with my Nikon camera on my shoulder and pedal down to the park where she sits and plays guitar and sings for any few people who will stop and listen. She has her guitar case is opened next to her, a small sign propped up inside with a rock with the words, "Spare happiness?" People stop and scrunch their eyebrows up at the sign as she sings, but I sit nearby leaning against my bike watching her fingers and mouth, entranced.

Her fingers strum and hold down strings, each nail a different color. Green-blue-red-orange-purple. I smile at her hands bittersweetly, knowing what the colors attempt to hide. Her oh-so-sad sadness is embedded. The unexplained melancholy pain trying to smile at us, trying to stay deep down and away from prying eyes. Her veins becoming filled with lies instead of blood as she drains them every night. The white scars still puckered on her exposed ankles and thighs, the shorts unable to cover them.

I pull my eyes away from her and scoot down the grass to lie on my back, facing the sky, watching clouds move lazily to the right, her voice hitching rides on the wind and floating to everybody's ears. People stop to listen, stop their conversations, freeze in place, just to hear for a few seconds. The don't understand the sign, but they understand what real beauty is.

And then it's over. The song has ended, the frozen park slowly rotates back into life, continue their noisy conversations about swimming next week and about who did who last night. I sit up and she's standing there, guitar case strapped to her back, the ends of her long sleeves held in her fists.

"Back again, oh dearest Luke?" her sweet voice filling my ears, a song in itself.

I pull my eyes away from her sleeves and up to her eyes, a brown so dark it's black, ringed with puffy red skin covered with a layer of thin black makeup. "But of course."  
>"A normal girl would think that you're very creepy for knowing exactly when I'm at the park every day, you know."<p>

"You aren't a normal girl though, now are you?" She raises her eyebrows at me for a moment before looking away and adjusting her guitar case strap. "Anyway, might I be able to take a picture of you on this oh-so-lovely day?"

"You will even if I say no."

"You know me so well." I pull myself off the grass and turn my camera on, pointing the lens at her smiling face and adjusting the zoom before snapping the single daily shot. I pull it away from my face, looking at the screen and flipping through the pictures of the past, and each is the same; red ringed black eyes with black makeup, wavy brown hair flying around her face, riding on the wind.

And when I look up, she's gone.

Just like every day.


	2. Chapter 2

My shoes were clicking on the worn stone of the castle hallways. A steady beat that kept my mind off the stinging of my skin. The books I was carrying were pressing into the scratches painfully, but I still didn't regret making them just a few minutes before. This was my secret; what made me who I was.

But I digress. It was the last day I would be at Hogwarts. It was the end of my sixth year, but I was leaving with Harry and Ron to defeat Voldemort after Bill and Fleur's wedding. It could very well be my last summer of life in general, but that didn't sadden me. For all I knew, Voldemort was right and the world would actually be better off without a Mudblood like me.

I entered the library, inhaling the delicious scent of worn books and listening intently to the musical sound of crinkling pages as students turned them one right after the other. I walked to the back shelves, placing the books in their respective places. I had memorized the layout of the large room long ago, and no longer needed the magic that levitated them to their spots. I turned on my heel and came face to face with Ginny, who looked at me worriedly.

"Hermione, are you alright?" Her brown eyes were creased at me worriedly, lips pursed.

I sighed. "Yes, Ginny, I am. I told you this this morning too." I brushed by her, my best friend, and felt her eyes on my back.

"None of us believe you, you know." I paused, briefly.

"Yeah."

I made my way to the Great Hall for the end-of-year feast, although it was dull and bland without Dumbledore's speech.

It was McGonagall who stood at the podium, her bun pulled so tight it seemed she was trying to pull her wrinkled skin back to a youthful tightness.

I took my place on the bench between Harry and Ron, feeling Ron's warm hand on my knee. I quickly crossed my legs, effectively removing his hand.

"Welcome to the end of year feast. It's been a – a rough year for all of us, I think, but we're managing. That's what matters. Have hope, everyone. Albus would have expected it of us in a situation like this. Please enjoy the feast."

Food appeared on the plates in front of us, and after a brief moment of silence, the usual clattering of forks on plates filled the room. Except for mine and Harry's.

"I don't feel like eating much, do you?" The Boy-Who-Lived turned to me.

"Not particularly," I responded, though I figured our reasons were different.

We quickly lapsed into silence, watching Ron shovel food into his mouth, though he had the grace to stop once he noticed we were watching.

Seamus, across the table, paused in his eating as well, but only to shout, "Evening post!"

The students at the tables all turned towards the owls swarming in from the large windows carrying the last letters of the year.

Hermione looked on with mild interest as a small, cheap-looking brown owl flew towards her at a dive.

"Bet that one's for you, 'Mione," Ginny commented. Hermione flinched at the name, but just shrugged.

"Maybe,"

Ginny's thoughts were confirmed as the owl landed on Hermione's outstretched arm and dropped a small parcel onto her empty plate. Harry handed it a small cracker from the table and it flew away.

"Were you expecting anything?" Seamus asked nonchalantly, opening his own letter.

"Do I look like I was?" Hermione looked at the package confused, fiddling with the crude knot of twine. Harry ended up handing her a knife from his plate and she took it, glancing at it for a long moment as her arms stung wildly, but quickly took it and cut through the string.

She unwrapped the plain brown packaging paper and out spilt picture after picture all over her lap and plate.

They were all Muggle and of her from the previous summer.

"Blimey, Hermione," Ron's eyes widened in astonishment, "you have a stalker!"

She stared at them, open mouthed, as she realized they were sent from the Muggle who watched her in the park. Luke. She glanced again at the paper in her hands that had held the pictures.

_Found you._

"Yes, I suppose you did," she mumbled to the paper, her heart pounding in her chest.


	3. Chapter 3

I closed my eyes and tried to remember the last time I had seen Hermione as Hermione.

It was in the park, of course, and she had her voice on display. She smiled for a picture and disappeared. Like usual. But then she disappeared for the school year. Everyone said she went to a boarding school overseas, but I didn't buy it. A boarding school, sure. But one far more interesting than one in America.

The boys that followed her wanted to save her. We all saw the scars. Each of us wanted to be the one to kiss each puckered line and tell her we would love her.

It changed rapidly over the last week of summer.

She showed skin and went to parties. She went home with many boys, but rumor had it that she was a tease and burst into tears every time he started taking her clothes off. She grinned and winged out her eyeliner. She painted her nails black. She took her guitar to a party and by midnight we all looked on as she brought it down again and again on the concrete of the driveway.

She had finally broken.

Months of fake expressions, fake happiness and fake friends had taken its toll on her. She was no longer the Hermione boys followed.

She was no longer cracked and able to fix; she was now snapped in half and alone. She was Humpty Dumpty, and none of the King's men could put her back together again.

I was the one who remained.

I went to the parties she did and held her hair as she crouched over a toilet retching.

I whispered in her ear that it was okay when she was sure it wasn't.

It was that last summer that I learned more about her than any before.

She whispered to me what her future held. She told me the horrors that had befallen her at her school. She cried into my shirt that soon she would probably be dead.

I told her that she would live. She would fall in love. She would find true happiness. I kissed her cheek, held her hand, and told her about me, the boy who remained.

On the last day before she departed for Hogwarts and her sixth year, she held me close and told me she would die happy. She had fallen in love.

I smiled down at her, and told her she would live to see me again.

"Luke, you will never find me."

* * *

><p>How stupid was I? Of course he would find me. He always had. He had sought me out when I disappeared from the park, he had sought me out when I was drunk, and he had sought me out when I left him. It had taken him the whole school year, but maybe he had planned it this way.<p>

Sure enough, when I exited the train the next morning, he was standing there, his wavy blond hair twitching in the wind. When he saw me, his eyes lit up, a grin spreading across his face. He moved toward me and rested his hands on my waist, leaning in and kissing me. My eyes opened with shock before closing, and behind me I heard, "Bloody hell," more than once, but I didn't care. All I knew was Luke. He had found me.


End file.
